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I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant.
by zhivota 1y ago
I worked at two National Laboratories, Argonne and Idaho, on NSF funded internship grants. The second one turned into a full time job, again on an NSF grant.
The first one was on supercomputing, writing proof of concept code for a new supercomputing operating system (ZeptoOS). The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for military applications (at a time when this was not commoditized at all, we were building UAVs in a garage and I was writing code derived from research papers).
Seeing all the programs that launched my career get dismantled like this is really saddening. There are/were thousands and thousands of college students getting exposed to cutting edge research via these humble programs, and I assume that is all now over. It didn't even cost much money. I got paid a pretty low stipend, which was nonetheless plenty to sustain my 20 year old self just fine. I think the whole program may have cost the government maybe $10k total.
$10k to build knowledge of cutting edge science that filters into industry. $10k to help give needed manpower to research projects that need it. $10k to give people who otherwise didn't have a road into science, exactly what they need to get their foot in the door.
I don't know how to describe what's happening here, but it's really, really stupid.
- jjtheblunt 1y ago[flagged]
- zhivota 1y agoYou could be right... I'm just going off of what I've seen in the other departments they touched. Let's hope at least this program would be left untouched. https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/reu https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/reu There are tons more though, this is only the tip of the iceberg of what the NSF funds of course.
- jjtheblunt 1y agoagreed, and yeah reorg makes more sense, but we'll see.
- davrosthedalek 1y agoIt seems a lot of REUs were not funded this year. One of my students applied to 25 REUs. He says about a third of them evaporated because of funding stops.
- netsharc 1y agoHow is it possible that you still see the chance that the actions are being done in "good faith"? In my opinion you'd have to construct a lot of "visual barriers" in order to not see the "full picture" of what kind of people the current regime is made of, and what their motivations would be... You'd have to be looking away, because looking at it would mean admitting you've been wrong.
- jjtheblunt 1y ago[flagged]
- netsharc 1y ago[flagged]
- jjtheblunt 1y ago[flagged]
- unethical_ban 1y agoIf it isn't happening in good faith, then you can't call it a "reorg". That's like shooting something in the head and saying you "reorganized" their brain matter.
- jjtheblunt 1y agoThe article itself says it's a reorg...but isn't clear if it's more.
- magicalist 1y ago> The article itself says it's a reorg...but isn't clear if it's more. It also says they're firing a bunch of subject matter experts and want to slash the budget by 55%. What other "more" are you looking for?
- 1y ago
- asiejralsijr 1y ago[flagged]
- dontlikeyoueith 1y agoIt's quite possible tariffs will make us all rich too. Why post something this useless?
- ponow 1y ago[flagged]
- szundi 1y ago[dead]
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoHard to declare that the earth is only 6000 years old with all those science hippies in the way. Gotta set priorities.
- baxtr 1y agoWhat do you mean when you say "only"?!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SequoiaHope 1y agoThe post is a reference to religious fundamentalists that deny science and declare that god made the earth 6000 years ago. Science is an inconvenience for those wishing to make such declarations.
- moralestapia 1y ago[flagged]
- dredmorbius 1y agoThe Ussher Chronology, held fast to by many Christian religious fundamentalists / extremists through Young Earth Creationism: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism>
- greenchair 1y ago[flagged]
- tobyjsullivan 1y agoMany scientists believe the earth is, in fact, much older than that.
- guywithahat 1y ago[flagged]
- kjkjadksj 1y agoMust be why you pay for college right, no demand otherwise they’d be paying you!
- guywithahat 1y agoI think you messed up your grammar which makes the sentence hard to read but I think what you're getting at is right. College is a service, which is why you pay for it. If it didn't provide value, nobody would use it. Free college is a danger because there's no good way to assess its market value or whether we need it at all. It's only by adding value that we create wealth, and some of these NSF grants are just jobs programs for engineers.
- SequoiaHope 1y ago> Free college is a danger because there's no good way to assess its market value or whether we need it at all. You should figure out why free college is so successful for Germany.
- tristor 1y agoIn some ways, actually yes. College has gotten more expensive over time, partly because demand for college has outweighed the benefits of college on the other side. It is a shift in the education market away from the cost profile being aligned with outputs, to being focused on prestige/experience as the primary selling point. It's also largely related to the glut of paying foreign students nearly outnumbering Americans. Prior to these shifts, college was much much much less expensive.
- SequoiaHope 1y agoEfficient market fallacy.
- overfeed 1y ago>$10k to give people who otherwise didn't have a road into science, exactly what they need to get their foot in the door. The current admin thinks those $10k grants are better spent by giving them to some billionaire via tax cuts. Impoverishing the many to enrich a few is a 3rd-world, banana-republic mindset, and unfortunately is not self-correcting. The politically-connected will see the pile of money controlled by the treasury as easy money, unless there is some organization with enough independence and (arresting) power keeping a check on them.
- trhway 1y agoThat $10K breeds a Democratic/progressive voter. The actions of the current admin are pretty logical if one considers the goal of increasing political power of the conservative populist mass (i don't say "voters" here as making voting meaningless is among the end-games here) I'm waiting for an analog of my "favorite" AETA laws to be made into federal law (FETA - Federal Enterprise Terrorism Act) criminalizing any anti-government speech/protest into terrorist/extremist hell. Note about the First Amendment - AETA doesn't seem to be affected by it, and so FETA would be safe from it too. Would be pretty similar to the Russia's discreditation laws and those China' security laws being used against democratic opposition in Hong Kong for example.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoFor those who think this is exaggeration, remember that JD Vance wrote a heartfelt endorsement for the skull book, the one arguing that anyone who opposes MAGA is a secret communist revolutionary who needs to be crushed by any means necessary to avoid an imagined communist genocide that they allege we are all plotting. Absolutely wild shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhumans It's not even midterm season yet, they are already testing the waters by conducting extrajudicial deportations of random Hispanics to labor camps in El Salvador, and the sitting US President is on record saying the El Salvador labor camps need to be expanded by 5x to accommodate the "home growns." Dark times ahead.
- trhway 1y ago
- moralestapia 1y ago[flagged]
- ChrisLTD 1y agoIf there is a good reason, the administration is welcome to communicate to the public. This is reportedly a democracy, after all.
- Arainach 1y agoWe do know what's going on because they wrote all of this down including their motives and end goals well before the elections.
- VerminOctopus1 1y agoYou’re getting downvoted because of your childlike naïveté and/or willful ignorance. There is no hidden “very good reason” lurking somewhere. They are slashing and burning the federal government.
- moralestapia 1y agoPersonal attacks are not allowed here.
- saagarjha 1y agoThat's not a personal attack. You're just wrong.
- moralestapia 1y agoIn your dreams.
- lmeyerov 1y agoI started a company that makes a bunch of many every year based off of NSF research, and Nvidia is making even more based on our work that spun out. I'm not a unique story, yet they cut half the NSF budget and half the NSF-funded STEM grad students (NSF GRFP, ...). So no, whatever the NSF was doing, we should be encouraging more of it, not half of it. NSF/NIH are much more valuable investments than billionaire tax cuts as they're some of the most valuable things humanity can be doing in general, dollar-for-dollar. I try to avoid Left/Right topics, but as others point out, this one is more like Russian Talking Points for US Special Interest Groups, and beyond being anti-american, is anti-human.
- calmbonsai 1y agoPreach! It even touched high-schoolers. I got a high school internship on an NSF grant to study ground penetrating radar for landmine detection. It was my first exposure to Maxwell's equations, Unix, networking, and most importantly how real research gets done. I took away lifelong management and research mores, a love of Unix, and ended up getting my degree in EE. These cuts will have huge follow-on costs that we can't later simply re-budget to recover.
- CamperBob2 1y agoI don't know how to describe what's happening here You can describe it as a deliberate and very successful attack by America's enemies, because that's what it is.
- sheepscreek 1y agoWhat’s in it for people like the current Trade and Treasury Secretaries, heck even the V.P? In their previous lives, they seemed levelheaded - yet here we are. Is it just pure selfishness, “if I don’t do it, someone else will” mentality?
- generic92034 1y agoThere never was any shortage of opportunists.
- sixothree 1y agoThe VP seems level-headed? He's a moldable piece of wet clay. How can you even begin to suggest stability would come from this person?
- sheepscreek 1y ago“seemed” - past-tense. Before he became VP nominee. He had an arguably strong vocal stance against many things he stands for now. Truly perplexing. You’re both right in basically calling this “opportunistic” or supremely mouldable, perhaps even morally flex and incompetent behaviour. It’s a shame. Still I wonder if post current admin, there is a way these people could still redeem themselves. I want to think that at least some are using the new found focus to get shit done for good, perhaps at the expense of looking like puppets or yes men/women (publicly).
- CamperBob2 1y agoI want to think that at least some are using the new found focus to get shit done for good, perhaps at the expense of looking like puppets or yes men/women (publicly). I imagine a lot of them rationalized their decisions that way, as you suggested earlier. "If I don't take this job with Trump, he'll give it to a corrupt crony or some random nutcase. But if I do take it, I can work for positive change from the inside. Hmm. I really don't have a choice, do I?"
- lossolo 1y ago> I don't know how to describe what's happening here, but it's really, really stupid. It's just a cynical game to get the highest tax cuts for their buddies and sponsors. https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/05/08/congress/johnson-targets-small-tax-package-with-1-5t-in-spending-cuts-00336222 https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/05/08/congress/jo...
- rcpt 1y agoThere are no tax cuts because of this. The money saved is a rounding error in the federal budget. This is an ideological purge.
- lesuorac 1y agoOnly if you constrain yourself with reality. Musk was floating a DOGE dividend with all the money being saved. It'll of course be funded the same was covid checks were but that doesn't mean you have to be honest about how its funded.
- hackyhacky 1y ago> It's just a cynical game to get the highest tax cuts for their buddies and sponsors. Not at all. We mustn't forget that it's also a cynical punishment for universities who consistently vote for the wrong person.
- bitmasher9 1y agoThe upcoming generation will be plenty happy with factory jobs instead of jobs in supercomputing or science.
- Frost1x 1y agoI know you’re being facetious, but I think there’s some nugget buried in this sarcasm. One issue with our ever increasingly intellectual focused economy is that it leaves behind people who may just not be cut out for these such careers. I’m not against having these economies (I too used to work in supercomputing, with national labs), they’re very necessary, but we need to find a way for people who might not fit very well in such positions to still feel productive in society, and most importantly, still live comfortably in society. Industry and jobs need to exist for people who can’t do science and supercomputing or at least aren’t cut out for it as a career day in/out to still live comfortably. Bringing back manufacturing isn’t the answer to that, but at some point as competition pulls the bar up so high and specific, we leave a lot of people behind, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing. They surely have plenty of other skills that contribute to society as well and even if they don’t, they should also be taken care of for at least trying. Maybe it’s just a lack of opportunity in education and training that fixes it, maybe it’s other careers that pay will, maybe it’s government subsidies, but I think plenty of the discourse now promoting these ideas like manufacturing are founded on shrinking of the middle class, and that’s partly due to how demanding it is now to live at that level of general financial security.
- bitmasher9 1y agoI have a bit of a bias in advocating more for enabling excellence than accommodating average. I will concede we have done a terrible job at sharing the harvest, but it’s often the excellent that are responsible for our harvest being so plentiful to begin with.
- sfpotter 1y agoExpand your view of what constitutes excellence.
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- beachy 1y agoIt's the American experience that decisions are made at the executive level based on faulty intelligence, while people working at the coal face such as yourself have a much better understanding of what's really going on. Case in point the Vietnam war, which cost thousands of lives because decisions were based on statistics from the field which had been heavily manipulated as they percolated upwards. Right now, just as one tiny example, we see the effect of tariffs on prototyping services such as JLPCB, a chinese-based company which makes on demand printed circuit boards. There is no way that it makes sense to dramatically increase the costs to US companies and citizens of creating PCBs which are critical components at the heart of many new products. All that will do is to drive innovation away from the gifted hacker working from his garage in Michigan, and towards countries other than the USA who can order PCBs at reasonable prices. I'll guarantee that no one understands this at the level where these decisions are made.
- donnachangstein 1y ago[flagged]
- theshackleford 1y ago> In case it wasn't completely clear: stop sending the Chinese money This is the same thing I’m working to sell people on, only in regards to the US. Working hard to get them to dump US software products and services. Fingers crossed!
- Henchman21 1y agoThese tariffs are designed to destroy the American economy and primacy on the world stage.
- myko 1y agoPretty much this. Anyone who has paid attention to trump's work knows the goal is to destroy the USA
- 1y ago
- SpaceNoodled 1y ago> it's really, really stupid. That's it, you've described it.
- donnachangstein 1y ago> I think the whole program may have cost the government maybe $10k total. Your numbers are off by an order of magnitude. There is no government program in existence that costs $10k total, you are almost assuredly ignoring overhead and all other costs. It's like calling a contractor to repair something, then crying foul when he charges $350 because you found the part on Amazon for $15. But let's assume it was $10k. > $10k to build knowledge of cutting edge science that filters into industry. $10k to help give needed manpower to research projects that need it. $10k to give people who otherwise didn't have a road into science, exactly what they need to get their foot in the door. To be blunt, you are upset because you got to work on a fun boondoggle project and others are being denied that privilege. I won't doubt it was fun and educational but I can't in all honesty pretend that is a good value for the taxpayers. Unless you are producing something of value to the public, it's wasteful, and that $10k deserves to be returned to the taxpayers. Taxpayers are not on the hook to keep you busy with pointless yet fun busy-work. That is private industry's job.
- counters 1y ago> I won't doubt it was fun and educational but I can't in all honesty pretend that is a good value for the taxpayers. The students who work on these types of projects go on to create technology, companies, and jobs. The skills and experience they learn is a direct injection into our innovation economy. And of course that's not even to mention that a lot of the things they work on will never get vetted in private industry, so we'll never even know if there is value hidden in the weeds.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoMoney "wasted" by the NSF is far better spent than money wasted in, say, the Google Graveyard or any other monument to private malinvestment. This is because science has a value capture problem by design, making it systematically uninvestable by the private market, making opportunities plentiful -- and making it an archetypal example of a place where government investment has a role to play, because we can capture value as a country that is impossible to capture as a company. The real scandal is that we don't do more of it: our global competitors do not share the same contempt for science that is increasingly infecting the USA, and slowing our jog as they pass us is the worst strategy I can possibly imagine.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jasonfarnon 1y agois this type of research really at risk? I thought the feds were after research with an ideological bent. Rather than speculate about how the feds might see certain research as ideological, can we have some concrete examples of the type of research projects that have been discontinued?
- hobs 1y agoDo you know that sealioning on the 1000th ridiculously bad cut is just in bad faith right? At this point we don't actually need to spend time proving how the Trump administration is doing a wrong thing actually, it can be inferred from the other EVERY SINGLE TIME.
- transcriptase 1y agoSo you’re saying being the NPC who endlessly repeats “Orange man bad!” is not only the morally responsible thing to do, but the logical thing as well.
- saagarjha 1y agoOh, you should be going "orange man bad", but there's no need to be an NPC about it. Organize against it.
- MengerSponge 1y agoOkay, take a moment and think: what about this administration has given you the impression that they're going to take the time to carefully understand a system they're bent on dismantling?
- jasonfarnon 1y agowell, this is kind of my point. We might have different ideas of which "system they're bent on dismantling".
- 1y ago
- mullingitover 1y ago“These geese which lay golden eggs are costing a lot of taxpayer dollars, we’re going to save a lot of money on corn when we butcher them.”
- almosthere 1y agoI think the problem with seeing it this way, is someone was making $1M as overhead to hire you for 10k.
- davrosthedalek 1y agoWho do you think made $1M overhead on this 10k?
- plasma_beam 1y agoProud to say that in the early-mid 2000s I was a consultant dev at NSF and worked on the research proposal submission and eval website called Fastlane. They’ve since moved the functionality to research.gov, but my code ran in production for 20ish? years? It was old school Java Struts, JSPs, EJB’s..typical J2EE of the time. Lots of people I worked with decided to leave consulting and became NSF employees. They were good and smart people.
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago>The second was on the automated stitching of imagery from UAVs for murder applications Fixed that for you
- zhivota 1y agoFWIW the application was to send up UAVs after Air Force runways were attacked to isolate exact locations and sizes of damage, to allow for the fastest possible fixes to be made. In these situations, seconds and minutes matter as the planes in the air need a place to land before they run out of fuel.
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y agoOh, that's pretty interesting